One-fifth of pro-govt voters are against EU membership?
One-fifth of pro-government voters would reject Hungary’s European Union membership, a Socialist MEP said on Tuesday, citing a survey.
Istvan Újhelyi told an online press conference that the Publicus Institute survey commissioned by Social Democrats of the European Parliament found, however, that if a referendum were held now, 86 percent of Hungarians overall would vote to keep the country in the bloc.
At the same time, 48 percent agreed with the statement that Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party wanted to lead Hungary out of the EU, Újhelyi said.
Fully 75 percent of respondents were aware the country was missing out on some EU funds because of issues connected with the rule of law and corruption.
The Socialist politician said most respondents did not think this was connected with the issue of “LBTQ activists promoting gender reassignment surgery in kindergartens”, referring to the government’s stance that the funds had been withheld because of the amendments to Hungary’s child protection law, which the EU has called discriminatory against the LGBTQ community.
András Pulai, the strategic director of Publicus, said the survey conducted in early February was based on a representative sample of 1,000 respondents and another 1,000 opposition voters to gain more detailed data on that demographic.
He insisted that Fidesz had “ratcheted up anti-EU rhetoric in the past three or four years,” adding that EU-sceptic Fidesz voters had been the most susceptible to those arguments, while they had no effect on opposition voters.
Most respondents said the rule of law was the value that needed the most protection, a view that might have changed with the war in Ukraine, he said.
Despite “state propaganda”, 27 percent of pro-government voters saw the state of the rule of law in Hungary as problematic, he said. A significant majority would increase the EU’s jurisdiction in policy areas such as the fight against corruption, the rule of law, and the organisation of health care and education, he said.
On another note, the Hungarian Democratic Coalition has accused the government for using the vaccine registration e-mails for campaign purposes.
The government is campaigning against the opposition and the European Union by sending messages to email addresses originally provided for vaccine registration, an opposition candidate of Veszprém, in western Hungary, said on Tuesday.
Balázs Csonka told an online press conference that the cabinet had made it general practice to use all possible means for propaganda.
People who registered for a newsletter by the government communication centre were originally promised information related to vaccination but the cabinet has been continually using this platform for spreading its “lies and propaganda,” he said.
Csonka said messages were being sent out regularly “bashing Brussels and the Left and making seriously false statements”. Anyone with a clear mind can see that the sanctions against Russia are not just “vile plotting” by Brussels and the Hungarian Left.
Source: MTI